


Find Me Someone Like Narita

by museicalitea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 10:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7357324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museicalitea/pseuds/museicalitea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Right after we took this—</em>
</p>
<p>is another (and another, and another) thing Hisashi cannot remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Find Me Someone Like Narita

**Author's Note:**

> ...In my defense, this was prompted and [then further enabled](http://museicaliteacup.tumblr.com/post/142945572312/kinoshita-hisashinarita-kazuhito-memory-loss) by [Anfu](http://archiveofourown.org/users/anfuu), so really it's all her fault (that, and she once said something to the effect of "angst is impossible with KinoNari". This fic is in part my mission to prove her wrong but in part because I couldn't resist angst.)
> 
> Prompt: the way you said 'I love you'—in awe, the first time you realised it... and in a way I can't return.

Hisashi waits until Narita’s gone out for the afternoon—gone with his brows drawn, a long, careful squeeze of Hisashi’s shoulder and that sad, sad set to his mouth. He’s worried something will happen, which Hisashi supposes is justified enough, but he’s not planning to do anything remotely dangerous right now. It’s sending his stomach quivering and his hands shaking, though.

He waits ten minutes to be sure Narita isn’t unexpectedly coming back, then crosses to the bookcase, and amidst a patchwork of bright bindings and the soothing scent of aged paper, he finds the shelf, second from the top. The books up here are lined up neatly, bound in muted, neutral colours, and on the spine of each is a span of dates.

Hisashi swallows hard as he stares at them. He knows what Narita told him two weeks ago, gently and carefully. That they're living together. Dating. He never said for how long, but Hisashi didn't ask. The fact that he can't recall this, among all the things he's trying to reconcile in the wake of three lost years…

But then, it's not just those years. There's a dull ache still pulsing through his chest from where he didn't recognise two of his old kouhai from high school. If he closes his eyes, he can still see the very second a smile like sunshine faltered and broke and never quite recovered. At the same time, he only moved back into the flat— _their_ flat yesterday morning, and yet as soon as he saw the equipment in the kitchen his hands twitched, and he knew, somehow remembered exactly how to wield a knife and keep heat up and _how_ to do all this stuff. Which he supposes is okay. Means he'll be okay to work again once he's recovered enough.

(Although, it seems _enough_ doesn't include remembering Hinata Shouyou and that first year and three years and bits and pieces before then and how he is now _dating his best friend_ , apparently and _that_ pains him more than any injury.)

Hisashi swallows hard as he stares. Even though he _knows_ —can’t remember but knows anyway— Narita’s been acting very weirdly. So many retracted hands. Worried frowns when he thinks Hisashi can't see. A calendar shoved in his closet (and there are a lot of dates marked with scrawly hearts on it). And then there’s the matter of the bedrooms, one lovingly furnished and lived-in with a queen-size bed, and the other clean and neatly stocked with books and clothes, but lacking in all personality. King single.

That one happens to be Hisashi’s, which he doesn’t think is right. Because… well. Dating and living together means sharing a room in his book, but… Narita wouldn’t be trying to keep his distance unless there was a reason.

He knows Narita—or, he knew Narita well before he forgot everything—and he thinks that high school is too soon. So he skips past 2012, 2013—then 2014 and 2015 because that still feels too hasty for a guy who takes time and consideration over everything—

And with quaking fingers, he pulls the grey-bound album with a black _2016_ stamped on its side, and takes it over to the couch. The first page is scenery shots, all dated, all captioned, all in his handwriting. The pictures are nice, and he grimaces upon looking more closely at the scribbly notes on time and place. He should have made it neater. Before turning the page, he fingers the paper. It’s nice and thick. Very good quality.

One thing that he knows, or expects, at least, is that they're not exactly on a loose budget. Something as expensive as this feels has to have a purpose—and he knows in thinking about something as insignificant as that, he's delaying whatever it is he's afraid of.

When he sees the next page, it takes a moment before he remembers how to breathe.

Him. Beaming. Draped over Narita, who has hollow cheeks and hair in an awkward stage of growing out, and whose eyes are twinkling above a bright smile. Their heads are pressed together.

_Reunion of the better-looking half of the old Karasuno team!!! Photo by Tanaka (who wouldn’t stop whinging but I think he’s just jealous :9)_

Several more pictures from the same reunion cover the next few pages, and though Ennoshita, Tanaka and Nishinoya crop up with them many times over, whenever he sees himself, Narita is alongside.

He skips ahead, chewing at his lower lip. The pictures here are very much the two of them—sometimes selfies together, sometimes one posing and a caption in the other’s handwriting, a few of them both that must have been taken by strangers. Several candids, on rainy mornings and fiercely sunlit evenings.

And then Hisashi gets to the middle of the album. It’s a wonky selfie, at night in the lights of a festival, but the focus is sharp and that is very definitely him kissing Narita. Both his arms are flung around Narita’s neck, yukata sleeves shoved back, and Narita’s free hand is nestled in his hair. They're both flushed. Smiling.

Something surges up inside him: burning, terrified. He turns the pages faster, faster, looking, faster—

There. And there. And there and there and there and there and fifteen more times he counts in this album they're kissing. The captions get shorter and less literal the further he goes, and before he realises what he's doing he's piled the next three albums on the couch and begins to scan them, while all the while that scared fire is growling in his throat and stomach.

He doesn't know when these are. Pretty poetry can't tell him where they were sitting, cuddling in this one—nor what sort of a day he'd had that there's one of him fast asleep a year later—he wants to know but he flicks through the pages and nothing triggers the memory surge he wants more than anything in the world so he knows he's not useless and knows he can _make it_ —

One by one, the albums end up on the floor. Seven of them he goes through, before he ends up with his feet drawn up on the couch and panting like he's run a marathon. Hisashi’s brain is kind of in overdrive, and it takes a minute—or maybe several—before he notes that there's still that first album perched on the edge of the sofa. He pulls it towards him, and flips it open. It's that one of them kissing at the festival again.

And then he looks down at the caption.

_Right after we took this—_

Something clogs in his throat, and it’s not until the first tear lands on the page that Hisashi realises he’s crying. Slowly, they leak out and trail in hot, breathless tracks down his cheeks. It feels so weird. He hasn’t really cried since he woke up. He tried. He knew everyone else had been, and he’d tried so hard because he felt like that was what he needed. But he couldn’t quite get to that stage, so numbed by medications and blank space and pressing aches that never really went away.

But this is different. This isn’t just a memory gone in the crash.

This is something he had, and something he realises they must want him to find again.

But he’s tired. He hurts, and he’s so _tired._

By the time he hears the click of the key in the front door, half the albums from the shelf are littered over the couch and floor, and Hisashi has lost the battle with trying to stem his tears and the awful, inexplicable hurt coursing through his chest. He lifts his head to see Narita standing at the doorway to the main room, coat unbuttoned and hair windblown, and does his best to scrub his tears away with the heel of his hand. It doesn't really work, but he can't bring himself to mind anymore.

What he doesn’t expect is for Narita to walk over, gently place the albums on the floor, and pull him into a hug. Firm and warm, Hisashi sinks into it without a second thought. It feels so right. He doesn’t know if it’s because it’s Narita or because it’s a hug, but this is something he could have done with a lot more of.

“Sorry,” he says over and over, throat clogged with tears. “Sorry, ‘m sorry—”

And Narita hushes him as he lets it spill out, apologies and thoughts and every bit of his consciousness he can muster because none of it makes sense anymore or maybe it all does, but whatever the case, Narita holds him close and doesn't seem to mind for minutes and minutes and minutes. His voice is soft and gentle as he speaks, reassurances warm as a woolen blanket and without the _lack_ he had sensed from the doctors—his parents—

Narita is sure and warm, and there's something that feels okay about this even though he can't remember, wants to but he just _can't he can't he can't—_

It's a mess. Everything is fuzzy and too warm and pounding and aching. His throat. His head. His mind.

All through it, as he shuts his eyes to block out the pain, _what you can't see can't hurt you_ , all the time there are those gentle circles caressing slow and deep over his back, and a voice, whispering over his hair—

He must have slept, because the next thing he knows, he wakes up.

He's no longer curled up on the couch, but lying foetal across it. There's a pillow nestled under his head, a blanket draped over his body. As Hisashi squints in the dying light of the room, he sees that all the albums have been taken off the floor.

His gut twists. That was his mess. Narita didn’t have to clean that up for him.

Hisashi closes his eyes for a moment and considers the relative merit of leaving the sofa. He feels kind of woozy from the unexpected sleep, but his head doesn’t hurt and his body hasn’t sprung up any unwanted aches. It’s kind of a quiet relief, waking up for once without feeling like he’s been hit by a truck.

And, okay, he wasn’t actually hit by a _truck_ , but close enough.

It’s cold. December is settled over the city, and this year it has come in overcast grey and fierce winds. This flat isn’t very warm, so he pulls the blanket over his shoulders as he wriggles himself to sitting, and outside the howl of the wind is drowned out by the whining roar of a motorbike.

Hisashi shivers—suddenly. Violently. In a snap, he comes back to himself, and thinks: it wasn’t just from the cold.

Still with the blanket huddled around his shoulders, he pushes himself off the sofa. Narita’s not in the main room and Hisashi gets the feeling he won’t have gone out after… after _that_. He ought to apologise. For the mess as well. Maybe suggest getting started on dinner, or something else normal. Distracting.

Outside the main bedroom, he raises his hand ready to knock, but a soft noise from the other side of the door makes him pause. Resting his hand on the frame, he leans in closer, strains his ears. All the traffic noise from outside fades away, and all the soft mechanics of the flat sink into silence as a hitching, watery sob breathes through the air and cuts to Hisashi’s chest.

They keep coming. Narita was a quiet crier, back where Hisashi can remember that. Although, of all the bits and pieces in his head struggling to put themselves back together, this one sound and the way it strikes at his heart isn’t something he has to strain to remember.

He thinks, as he walks heavy-hearted to the other bedroom—which he has to try very hard to not call his room—that they probably need to talk. Properly talk about a lot of things. He thinks, as he undresses and pulls on an old, overlarge T-shirt that smells familiar in a way he just can’t place, that this is all terribly unfair to both of them.

He thinks, as he lies atop his bed and lets his tears trickle down to the pillow, that Narita has given him so very much because he loves him. Hisashi knows now beyond any shadow of a doubt, or any shadow of a memory lost forever, that Narita loves him.

But Hisashi can’t tell, if right now, he still loves Narita like that—with that strength and fire and solidity, when every time he closes his eyes—

He feels like everything might seize in a breath and sink away.

☆☆☆

One album doesn’t return to the shelf that night. It lies on Narita’s bedside table, opened to that one page in the middle, with the lopsided selfie; paper blotted with two sets of fresh tear stains and the caption clear as day.

_Right after we took this—_

_It takes all of about two seconds after the shutter goes off before Hisashi’s impatience gets the better of him and he pulls away from Kazuhito. For all that he never initiates this kind of stuff, Kazu seems very reluctant to stop kissing, which—well, Hisashi would sympathise ninety-nine percent of the time, but right now he has more pressing matters on his hands, namely:_

_“Did it take, did it take?”_

_“Think so,” Kazuhito says, extracting his right hand with a final ruffle of Hisashi’s hair and leaning on his shoulder as he flicks into his phone’s gallery. “Remind me again why we’re doing this…”_

_“For some reason, all our friends think kissing’s gross when someone else does it, and we need to get this on camera somehow. Practice makes perfect, you always say that.”_

_“True, true—Hisashi!”_

_“Hey, it didn’t come out so bad!” Hisashi tilts the stolen phone at distance as he examines their handiwork, which for a first attempt isn't completely terrible. Kazuhito has many talents, and he's pleased to see that selfies—despite Kazu’s repeated claims to the contrary—are another thing he can add to that list. Well. Couples’ selfies, at least. “Bit wonky, but the quality’s good—reckon we should try another one for posterity’s sake?”_

_When Kazuhito doesn't answer right away, Hisashi turns automatically. The bright festival lights throw Kazuhito into sharp contrast, and he has a strange sort of look on his face. Not annoyed, nor worried or anything like that._

_But he doesn't look nearly as_ **_happy_ ** _as Hisashi would hope he’d be._

_“Kazu? You alright?”_

_“I… ah. Just…”_

_It's then that he realises Kazuhito isn't paying attention to the photograph, nor the festival. He reaches out one hand to Hisashi and threads it through his hair, tender. His eyes soften—has Kazu really been looking at him and only him this whole time?—and a quiet smile quirks his mouth up._

_And after Kazuhito speaks, Hisashi is left so stunned—helplessly, overwhelmingly overcome with love and happiness—that he can't even react._

_Kazuhito pulls him into another kiss, and Hisashi melts into his embrace, because right there, just now—_

_—Kazu told me he loved me for the first time ♥_

**Author's Note:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/museicalitea) | [Tumblr](http://museicaliteacup.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I am sorry ;^;


End file.
